


Trust Me To Take You Home

by saltandrockets



Series: I Don't Want Love [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, Original Character(s), Slice of Life, Soft Kylux, Trans Character, Trans Hux, Trans Male Character, evil space dads, hello naughty murderers it's children time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 19:26:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7770124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandrockets/pseuds/saltandrockets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux had never imagined getting married.</p>
<p>He especially had not envisioned getting married in a half-empty cantina in the middle of the afternoon, witnessed only by a few day-drinkers of indeterminate species, repeating his vows while trying to keep his hold on the infant squirming in his arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust Me To Take You Home

**Author's Note:**

> sequel to [Bear](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7193663). while this story can more or less stand on its own, I recommend reading the first installment before you begin this one. (by the way, the series title comes from [the song of the same name by The Antlers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk2plAsaznI), who provide a lot of the mood music I listen to while writing in this ‘verse.)
> 
> your enjoyment of this fic will be directly proportionate to how many pictures you’ve seen of [Domhnall Gleeson with a beard](http://domhnall-tonal.tumblr.com/post/140776928299) and [Domhnall Gleeson with a baby](http://solohux.tumblr.com/post/148891698264/lets-have-another-one-hux-shes-happy-being).

_I can’t prove to you you’re not gonna die alone / but trust me to take you home / to clean up that blood all over your paws_  
— [“Putting the Dog to Sleep,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg8Ckamh8Gw) The Antlers

\--

“Look at the state of this thing,” Hux mutters, elbows-deep in a hospitality droid’s rusted innards. Just when he thinks he can’t be shocked by the state of disrepair that these backwater types let their machinery fall into, he’s faced with some new horror. Sometimes he barely knows where to begin. “Absolutely disgraceful. A little upkeep, and this model could easily last another decade. But no, they had to let it grind itself down to nothing—”

“If they hadn’t,” Ren says, without looking up, “you wouldn’t be getting paid to fix it.” He’s sitting on a crate nearby, bottle-feeding the baby, predictably blind to the true shape of Hux’s problem.

“I wasn’t asking for your _opinion,_ you great lug.”

“Then why did you—” Somehow, Ren catches himself halfway through the question, screwing his face up in a blend of confusion and annoyance. “Oh, never mind.”

Hux exhales through his nose and continues to pick irritably through the tangled mess of wire and rubber tubing in the droid’s abdominal cavity, searching in vain for any that aren’t worn through or rotted. Perfect, just perfect—he’ll have to replace most of this garbage, or otherwise reroute the connections, and tack his out-of-pocket costs to the repair bill. He can’t imagine that will go over well with the Rodian who owns this droid. Of course, that’s what Ren is for—to hover menacingly while Hux settles the final bill and make sure they get what they’re owed.

It’s been almost three months since Hux regained consciousness on this freighter—three months since Ren plucked him from the hands of the Resistance—and he’s still overwhelmed by all of this: roaming the Outer Rim as the galaxy’s most wanted man, with Ren and the baby. Especially the baby. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever really get used to this life, but he supposes he’ll have to.

Each time they touch down on some out-of-the-way planet or moon, he and Ren pick up odd jobs around the port to acquire enough money to get them to their next destination. Repairs, mostly: speeders, droids, even appliances, whatever someone’s willing to pay them to fix. Together, they’ve tuned up a handful of hyperdrives, as well.

They do most of their work here, in the freighter’s cargo hold. A busted hoverboard Hux hasn’t gotten to yet is waiting by the workbench; he needs to have it in running by next cycle. Just now, the boarding ramp at the far end of the hold is lowered, and he can hear the dull roar of the port outside. Beings of all varieties bustle past, under the harsh sun. A hot wind is blowing, stirring the reddish dust that seems to coat everything on this planet. 

Hux wipes his brow with the back of his hand, probably smearing grease across his forehead in the process. It’s beneath him, this kind of work. Demeaning, almost. But beggars can’t be choosers—and as much as it chafes him, that’s more or less what he’s become. He’s not in the position to turn his nose up at paying work, not with an infant to support. 

He glances up to see that Ren has finished feeding the baby and has arranged her against his shoulder, thumping her back. A cloth is draped over his shoulder for the sake of cleanliness, though he’s proved himself to be oddly unfazed by vomit. Somehow, even when the baby spits up on Ren, Hux is the one who ends up gagging in disgust. Bodily expulsions are far from Hux’s realm of expertise or comfort, but he manages, for the baby’s sake.

She needs a name, Hux thinks as he looks at her. Just over three months old, and she doesn’t have one yet—at least, not one her fathers can agree on. Ren has taken to calling her Shmi, a name that made Hux sputter a laugh the first time he heard it, thinking it was a joke. That was the wrong reaction; apparently, it’s a family name.

They’ve been bickering over the name for weeks. So far, Hux has refused to legitimize Ren’s choice by using it, pointedly referring to their daughter only as “the baby.” It annoys Ren to no end, and to be completely honest, Hux isn’t at ease with the situation, either. He wants to settle on a name, but he’s not so desperate that he’ll allow his child to be named _Shmi._

On the earliest days on the freighter, Hux and Ren chose new names for themselves without much difficulty, which they planned to use wherever they landed. Ren picked Eben, saying it was close enough the other names he’d gone by to easily turn his head. Hux had settled on Niall. It was the name he had intended to take when he first announced to his family that he was a boy, before his father declared that Hux would be called Armitage.

He didn’t hate being Armitage, not exactly, but it hung on him like an ill-fitting suit, a constant reminder of a choice he’d been denied. For that reason, from his first day at the Academy, he’d always preferred to be simply called Hux. Armitage was the boy his father had named; General Hux was someone altogether greater, an identity he’d forged himself.

Of course, he’s not General Hux anymore, either, not really. He tries not to think of that.

“I’m going to put Shmi down,” Ren says after a while, rising.

“Will you stop calling her that already?” Hux complains, before Ren has the chance to escape from the cargo hold. He looks up from the mess of wires with a scowl. “I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s not her name.”

Ren sighs in a huffy way. “Just look at her,” he says, exasperated. “She even _looks_ like a Shmi.”

Hux’s lip curls in distaste. “She most certainly does not. _Shmi_ sounds like slang for some alien venereal disease.”

“Just because it’s not some pretentious Imperial name, _Armitage_ —”

“It sounds like a rash! I can hear it now: ‘Oh, look at that poor fellow, he’s caught Shmi—’”

“You haven’t come up with any good alternatives yourself,” Ren says.

“I’ve suggested plenty of names,” Hux fires back. “You rejected them all out of hand. Did it ever occur to you that I might want to name her after a relative, too? You don’t have the monopoly on family names—”

Ren scoffs. “You hate your family!”

“Oh, you’re one to talk.”

For a second, Ren actually looks shocked, though he should know by now that Hux isn’t afraid to hit below the belt. “You’re only doing this to spite me,” he says at last, reddening. “You don’t even care about the name, do you? You just want to deny me something I want, to prove that you can, like you’re in charge here—”

“I’m in no mood for your clumsy psychoanalysis,” Hux snaps, his jaw tightening. “Now would you do something useful for once, and put her down so we can get back to work?”

“You’re an ass,” Ren says, with feeling, and sweeps out of the cargo hold with the baby.

Hux fights the urge to throw a wrench. “Coming from you, that’s meaningless!” he yells instead, loudly enough that the metal hull throws his words back to him. Then he forces himself to take a slow breath and returns to the task at hand. This droid isn’t going to fix itself.

 

\--

 

The marketplace is a huge, crumbling stone building three levels high, capped by a domed roof made of cloudy glass. Looking up, Hux can see the sky: blue and sheer and endless, without even a wisp of cloud. It’s an arid planet, all red dust and scrubland. Hux wonders when it last rained here. He doesn’t think he could stand to live on a world without rain, not if he had any choice.

Aliens jostle Hux and Ren carelessly on all sides as they wind their way from stall to stall; the air is thick with countless voices shouting in half a hundred garbled tongues. A few days of repair work have netted them sufficient credits to keep them in food, fuel and sundries, at least until the next time they drop ship. That’s how they live now—a few days at a time, one world to the next.

While it’s relatively easy to get food suitable for adult humans, baby formula is harder to find in the Outer Rim. There’s not much call for it, considering the loose concentration of humans in this part of the galaxy. They have enough of the powdered stuff to last another standard week, by Hux’s calculations, but if they don’t come across any here, their next stop will have to be on a more populated world, so they can stock up.

The baby is slung against Hux’s chest, drowsy from the afternoon heat, head lolling. Off the ship, Ren doesn’t get to carry her around as much as he would like; Hux has a constant, niggling fear that someone will try to take her again. It’s irrational, he knows that—but for his own peace of mind, he prefers to keep her as close as possible.

Ren walks beside him, one hand always resting on Hux’s back, between his shoulder blades, a gesture that’s at once possessive and protective. Hux doesn’t care for it, but he’s given up shrugging Ren off in public; he supposes Ren is entitled to some irrational habits, too. Not that he thinks they’re likely to run into trouble here. Neither of them looks wealthy enough to rob—and besides, even without the helmet and robes, Ren is imposing, not the kind of man who is approached lightly.

These days, Ren even wears a blaster on his hip, a visible and unspoken threat, though it’s not his weapon of choice. His battered lightsaber hangs from his belt, amid a jangle of other tools, hidden in plain sight. Nobody would know what it is unless they were looking for it. He hasn’t needed it yet, but it’s always there, in easy reach.

When Ren pulls Hux aside, toward a fruit vendor, Hux goes willingly. He doesn’t pay much mind to the conversation, though—the alien working the stall only speaks Bocce, a language Hux never had any reason to learn during his military career. Ren, however, speaks it fluently.

Ren and the alien babble back and forth for a while, possibly arguing about the price of fruit. Hux half-listens, casting his gaze around and trying to gauge whether they’ve attracted any undue attention. It’s becoming a nervous habit. Every time he steps off the ship, he can’t shake the feeling that he’s made a tactical error.

It feels counterintuitive to wander a crowded marketplace like this, when he’s possibly the most wanted man in the galaxy—but this far into the Outer Rim, there’s little danger of discovery. By now, Hux looks almost nothing like the wanted holos with his face on them. Few people who’d known him in his former life would recognize him now, and certainly not at a glance.

He barely recognizes himself, most days. His hair is longer than he’s ever kept it before, loose and brushing the corners of his jaw. A coarse coppery beard transforms his face into something rough and hard. His hands are now constantly stained with dirt and engine grease. Well-worn civilian clothes complete the disguise of an insignificant Outer-Rim migrant, a man without a future or a past.

Except, it’s not really a disguise anymore. It’s his life now, forever. Somehow, he keeps forgetting that, only to catch himself a second later, a dull pain pulsing under his ribs.

He wonders if it was like this for Ren, when he first shed his identity like a skin he’d outgrown. He knows better than to ask. There are some things they just don’t speak about.

Ren wins his argument with the vendor, apparently, and they walk away from the stall with a sack of soft red fruit that Ren swears have a high nutritional value. Hux doesn’t know if that’s true, but they didn’t pay much, so he supposes it doesn’t really matter.

Like everywhere else along the Outer Rim, it’s almost impossible to take two steps without stumbling upon some kind of watering hole. In the marketplace, it’s a parched-looking Calamari slinging cold drinks from behind a makeshift bar, under the shelter of a colorful awning. Aliens sit around in the shade, drinking and chattering and making loud, awful noises that Hux assumes are laughter. One of them has set up a battered holodisk on a low table, broadcasting the news.

Out here, HoloNet connections are few and far between, and none are reliable. The feed is grainy, damaged from radiation as it was beamed across the galaxy, but Hux knows the subject of this holo instantly.

Leia Organa.

She’s wearing silvery-blue robes, her hair pinned up in an elaborate braid, giving her the look of a senator more than a general, undoubtedly for effect. Hux can’t make out what she’s saying over the dull roar of the marketplace, but it looks like she’s giving some kind of address—about the state of the war, no doubt, and the impending fall of the First Order.

Ren catches him looking and follows his gaze. His whole body tightens when his eyes land on the holo. He opens his mouth as if to speak, then snaps it shut again and looks pointedly away, his eyes dark.

Hux doesn’t. He lingers for a moment, thinking of the years he and Organa spent working to destroy each other, the months they spent goading each other in that cell, never realizing how completely in the dark they were. Kylo Ren made fools of them both.

He can still see Organa in his mind’s eye, the way she looked at him when she had discovered the connection between them: single-focused, urgent, like she was running out of time. _Do you love him? Did you ever?_

At the time, he didn’t understand what she was getting at. Now, of course, it all makes sense.

Everyone has a weak spot. General Organa’s is her son. It’s a pity Hux didn’t know that years ago. He’s sure he could’ve done something brilliant with that bit of information. _Pathetic old woman,_ he thinks, with less heat than he’d expected.

Hux takes one last look at the flickering holo. Organa made similar recordings after the destruction of the second Death Star, he recalls, stirring messages that urged common people to take up arms and help destroy the Galactic Empire once and for all. And here she is, three decades later, doing it all over again. Maybe history really is doomed to repeat itself, Hux thinks, looping endlessly until the universe finally collapses.

Not that Organa would mind if that were true. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself when she’s not engaged in some foolish crusade. It must be the only way she has to make sense of her life. Why else would she allow herself to be sucked into a lifetime of war? When what remains of the First Order is crushed, she will undoubtedly find something else.

Hux wonders, sometimes, which of them got the better deal.

 

\--

 

“Just give her to me,” Ren says, holding out his hands. “You’re never going to get anywhere like that.”

Hux pretends not to have heard him over the baby’s wailing. She’s been at this for more than an hour, relentlessly loud, and based on past experience, she has the ability to keep it up all night.

Gritting his teeth, Hux continues to bounce her against his shoulder while he paces the ship’s common area. She doesn’t need to be fed, changed or burped—he knows, because he’s already tried all those things, to no avail. She’s just _crying,_ for no discernible reason, and the sound is like an itch crawling across his brain. He’d do anything to make it stop, but sometimes, nothing he does has any effect.

It’s always a toss-up if he’ll be able to calm her. She’s a contrary little thing with an obvious bias. Sometimes, she won’t even take the bottle when Hux is the one feeding her, but sucks eagerly as soon as he passes her off to Ren. It feels, absurdly, like a personal slight.

This shouldn’t be happening. On the _Finalizer,_ Hux commanded some eighty-thousand souls; by all rights, he ought to be able to manage an infant. And yet, here he is, the baby red-faced and wailing in his arms, despite his best efforts.

Hux feels like he’s coming apart at the seams. Sometimes, he is shocked by how angry he can feel at his own child—especially when he hasn’t slept and she won’t stop crying. More than once, unable to tolerate another minute of screaming, he’s found himself with no option but to place the baby in the bassinet or push her into Ren’s arms and walk away to collect himself. It’s that, or give in to the temptation to shake her quiet.

Annoyingly, Ren has yet to lose his composure the way Hux does. It makes no sense that Kylo Ren, who regularly destroyed consoles and frightened petty officers half to death whenever the slightest thing didn’t go his way, should be infinitely patient with the baby. Hux assumes it’s a Force thing, unknown and unknowable. It has to be—there’s no other logical reason why Ren should be so much more capable at childcare.

“Hux,” Ren says, exasperated, in a tone that makes Hux’s jaw clench. Ren moves closer, hands still outstretched. “Give her to me already, will you? I want to get to sleep sometime before the next cycle.”

“I’m not incompetent,” Hux snaps, shooting Ren a venomous look.

“I never said you were! But you’re being ridiculous. She’s my baby, too—”

Unthinking, Hux rolls his eyes. “Oh, barely. She’s more mine than yours.”

“Except for when she needs feeding or changing in the middle of the night,” Ren says darkly. “When that happens, all of a sudden, she’s mine.”

“Well, it’s only fair.” Hux has to raise his voice further, to be heard over the baby’s ear-splitting screams. “I did all the hard work, didn’t I?”

And maybe that’s the crux of the issue, the real sore spot, even if he’ll never admit it out loud. It seems unfair, somehow, that Hux suffered all the pains and indignities of carrying and birthing her, and now she prefers Ren.

“You just want me to be bad at this,” Ren says, harsh and accusing. “That’s all this is. You want me to be a bad parent so you can be the good one by default, and you’re angry because it’s not panning out that way.”

“That’s absurd. Not everyone is as petty and small as you, Ren.”

But Ren’s looking at him with those eyes, dark and bottomless, and Hux hates that Ren doesn’t even have to skim his mind to know what he’s really thinking. “It kills you that I take better care of her than you do,” Ren says, almost smiling, disgustingly self-satisfied now that he thinks he’s got it. “Doesn’t it? You hate that you’re inept. And of course are—you were raised by nanny droids! I bet your parents never even _touched_ you when you were a child—”

“Oh, and yours were shining examples,” Hux fires back, witheringly. His mouth twists into a sneer. “A drug-smuggling pirate and a jumped-up politician who shipped you to the other side of the galaxy the first chance they got so they didn’t have to deal with your tantrums. Maybe if they had cared enough to discipline you, you would’ve had a chance at developing into a functioning human being—”

“Don’t talk about my parents!” Ren’s face is hard, his shoulders taut, but a patchy red flush is already climbing his throat, betraying his real feelings “You always do this. Any excuse to bitch about _her_ some more—”

“Her? And who might that be?” For a second, Hux feigns confusion, in the most condescending way he knows how. “Oh, yes, you mean your _mother_ —Leia Organa, the _leader of the Resistance._ You’re the son of my enemy, and it never occurred to you to speak up! Did all that Jedi training damage your brain?”

Ren is rapidly turning crimson—not just angry, Hux thinks, but humiliated. He’s struggling to control his voice. “There was never going to be a good time to tell you—”

“Any time!” Hux is well and truly shouting now, his voice bouncing off the durasteel walls. “Really, _any time_ would’ve been better than never, you miserable—”

He breaks off with a wince when the baby’s crying intensifies, like a spike being driven into his skull. For an instant, blood whooshing in his ears, it just makes him angrier. But when he looks down at her—so small, her face scrunched up in distress, her cheeks sticky with tears—he is abruptly slammed with remorse. It feels like the ground dropping out from under him. Something in his chest cracks.

“I’m going to bed,” he says roughly, the baby still gathered against his chest.

“You—” Ren starts to follow him, but seems to think better of it. He stops halfway across the common area, hands clenched at his sides. In a sour voice, he calls: “It’s not my fault your hormones are making you crazy!”

Hux almost stumbles, pauses for half a heartbeat, then forces himself to keep walking, spine straight. He does not immediately explode in a Ren-like fit of rage, no matter how tempting, because that’s what someone bombed out of their mind on postpartum hormones would do, and Hux refuses to prove Ren’s point for him. He stalks into the cabin, locking the door behind him.

For a long minute, he leans back against the cold durasteel door and struggles to collect himself. _Get a grip,_ he admonishes himself, while he shuts his eyes and tries to block out the wailing. _Control yourself. You have to control yourself._

But the sound is inescapable.

He shushes the baby, as gently as he can manage, bounces her a little. “Please stop crying,” he whispers, because he can’t think of anything else to do. This is not what he pictured for his life. “Do this one thing for me, darling. Shhh, you’re all right, no need for all this…”

The cabin isn’t really big enough for satisfying pacing, but he does it anyway, walking a circuit around the double bed and back again. He notices shirts and pants spilling out of a drawer in the storage unit bolted to the wall, undoubtedly from when Ren pawed around for clothes this morning and didn’t bother to put anything back. One of these days, Hux is going to strangle him with his own pants. For now, he settles for stuffing the offending clothes back into the drawer, one-handed, just so he doesn’t have to look at them anymore.

A yellow blanket is mixed in among Ren’s things—thin and small, used for swaddling. It doesn’t go in this drawer, not that Ren has any respect for basic organization, Hux thinks bitterly. It beggars belief that the man is technically royalty on two planets. Hux almost shoves the blanket back into the drawer with everything else, before a thought strikes him.

He sets the baby on the bed, smoothes out the little blanket beside her, and then places her on top of it. He wraps her up snugly, tucks the corners in neatly. By some miracle, she begins to settle down. Eventually, her cries taper off, and the silence seems very loud.

Feeling almost boneless with exhausted relief, Hux sinks down onto the edge of the mattress. It figures. He might’ve calmed her ages ago just by swaddling her the right way, but he’d allowed himself to get so frustrated that he didn’t even think to try it. At least Ren didn’t think of it, either—but, no, he has to stop looking at it like that, stop tallying up victories and defeats. Ren is not supposed to be his enemy in this.

Despite everything, Hux sometimes has to keep reminding himself that they aren’t rivals anymore. There’s no war, nothing left to fight for, now outside world expecting them to perform. It’s just the two of them now. The _three_ of them.

At length, he rises to unlock the cabin door, though he can’t quite bring himself to open it.

 

\--

 

A few hours later, the door creaks open—Hux really ought to oil the hinges again—and Ren pads inside. He’s probably spent the time since the shouting match sitting in the cockpit, stewing and glowering at this world’s three pale moons. It’s a miracle he didn’t destroy anything.

The cabin is dark. Hux lies in their bed, facing the wall with his back to the door, feigning sleep. He knows he’s not fooling anyone, but if he moves now, Ren might try to talk to him. Before long, they’ll be at each other’s throats, and Hux can’t do it again tonight. He’s exhausted. Maybe tomorrow, when he’s had a few hours of sleep.

Ren’s footsteps pause by the bassinet, and Hux can picture him leaning over it to check on the baby, the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Hux catches himself monitoring her breathing, too, just in case.

He’s become familiar with the rustle of Ren’s clothes as he undresses, the dip of the mattress as he climbs into bed. Usually, Ren immediately presses himself along Hux’s back, slotting his knees behind Hux’s and throwing an arm over him, like he’s never been anywhere else and never will be. But tonight, there’s a space between them. It’s narrow—the bed is barely big enough to accommodate the two of them, and they sleep close together out of necessity—but at the moment, it feels a mile wide.

Now that his anger has cooled, Hux is embarrassed by his own outburst, his lack of control. He can’t stop thinking of what it must’ve looked like from the outside. Kriff, he’s as bad as Ren these days. Maybe worse. The way he loosed his frustration—at the baby, even at Ren—shames him. He ought to be above that kind of behavior. There’s a sinking, squirming feeling in his chest that he identifies as regret. It’s not a feeling he’s used to. He doesn’t care for it.

Still, he isn’t going to apologize. He’s not obligated—at least, he doesn’t _think_ he is. And even if he were, he wouldn’t know how. He and Ren aren’t the kind of people who apologize, not even to each other. Especially not to each other.

“You’re not wrong,” Ren says, clumsily, in a low voice. He sounds like he’s trying not to wake the baby. “About my parents.”

Hux feels a sudden, absurd twinge of guilt over what he said before. He lets out a slow breath. “Yes, well—you’re not wrong about mine, either,” he mutters. “And in fact, I’m beginning to see the appeal of leaving the bulk of the work to a droid.”

Ren huffs quietly. He slings an arm around Hux, drawing him back against his broad chest, and Hux lets him. “I don’t want us to be like that,” Ren says. “I don’t want her to grow up thinking we hate each other.”

“I don’t hate you,” Hux says, and it feels like he’s confessing to something, a weakness. It occurs to Hux that this is probably the closest he’s ever come to telling Ren that he loves him. “Not all the time, anyway.”

A moment passes. Ren seems to mull something over. “If we’re doing this,” he says at last. “If we’re really doing this, I mean—”

“Doing what?”

“Committing ourselves to each other.”

Hux is suddenly glad still he’s facing away, because Ren can’t see him raise his eyebrows. “Haven’t we already? At least, I have.”

“Have you?” Ren sounds faintly dubious.

Sometimes Hux is astonished—and, frankly, annoyed—by just how much reassurance Ren needs, how much verbal stroking and coddling. Maybe he can blame that on Ren’s upbringing, too. “I had your child, in case you forgot,” he says. “And I’m here, aren’t I? On this garbage ship. With you.”

“You don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“For now. But I will, someday,” Hux tells him, easily, because it’s true. “In the future, there will be other options. And when the time comes…” He swallows. His mouth has gone oddly dry. “You should know that I have no plans to end up in anyone else’s bed.”

“I know that already,” Ren says, so quietly. He kisses behind Hux’s ear, the corner of his jaw, the back of his neck. His lips are chapped from this planet’s hot wind, moving against Hux’s skin with every word. “But it’s nice to hear you say it.”

Of course. Hux sighs through his nose, feeling at once vaguely irritated and vaguely fond of Ren.

They lie there in the dark for a long time, Ren’s body molded against Hux’s. Tonight, Ren only seems interested in sleep, for which Hux is grateful. Ren paws at him sometimes, always hopeful, but Hux has yet to allow more than some kissing and incidental fondling. He only had the baby three months ago. His body has healed from the birth, more or less, and he’s easing himself back onto his maintenance injections, but he doesn’t feel quite like himself yet.

“I’ve been thinking,” Hux murmurs, hovering on the edge of sleep.

“Mmm?”

“We have to call her _something_. It might as well be Shmi.”

 

\--

 

Pacifica 9 is a small, green, rainy speck on this system’s map, one of a scattering of moons orbiting a gas giant. Hux has never heard of it before, which is a good thing; they’re keeping to out-of-the-way worlds as much as possible.

They touch down on a cold, wet morning. The first time they disembark, Ren glances around at the port, at the aliens hurrying in all directions, heads bent against the rain. Then he casts his gaze out at the damp gray city and the low greenish mountains in the distance, wreathed in mist. He seems almost to be looking past them, at something beyond Hux’s scope of vision, which Hux assumes is more of Ren’s inscrutable witchcraft.

Finally, Ren nods to himself, as though satisfied. “This is it.”

“What?” Hux asks, busy adjusting Shmi’s sling. He has her strapped against his chest, under his jacket, so she’s shielded from the rain. She squirms a little in protest.

“The place where we’ll live,” Ren says. “I’ve seen it, in visions. It was only a matter of time before we landed here.”

Hux gives an elaborate scoff. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”

A day spent wandering convinces Hux that, at least, it shouldn’t be hard to pick up a few days’ work around here: The port is active, surrounded by a healthy crop of garages and chop shops. The city sprawling out from the port like a drunken spider’s web is not expansive or metropolitan by any means, but it’s a city nonetheless, a cut above the outposts and overgrown villages on many of the planets they’ve visited so far. There’s even a tiny medcenter.

Hours later, they buy an unfamiliar variety of steamed dumplings off a food cart that doesn’t look totally unsanitary and huddle together at a rusted metal picnic table to eat. The red awning that shields them from the rain shudders in the wet wind.

“So what do you think?” Ren asks, around a mouthful of dough.

“I think we ought to get back to the ship,” Hux tells him. “I should’ve put Shmi down for a nap an hour ago.”

Ren reaches out to brush his fingers over the top of Shmi’s head, through her soft dark hair. “You know what I mean.”

“It’s been less than a day. I haven’t had the time to develop a strong opinion about anything on this rock.”

“But you’ll consider it.”

Hux glares at the man beside him. “I will _consider_ considering it.”

The side of Ren’s mouth twitches in amusement. “That’ll do for now.”

 

\--

 

Hux wakes to a cold bed. When he rolls over, Ren isn’t where he should be. 

In fact, Hux thinks blearily, that’s probably what woke him. Ren is like a space heater and takes up more than his share of the mattress; his presence is impossible to miss, and so is his absence. For a moment, Hux is almost disappointed in himself—a few lousy months, and he’s already so used to feeling Ren beside him in the dark that he can’t sleep without him.

He can hear Ren puttering around in the next room, speaking quietly to the baby, his voice too low to make out the words. He’s probably fed her already.

Rain patters on the hull, steady and almost musical. They’ve been here for a week, and it hasn’t stopped raining fully for more than an hour at a time. Hux doesn’t mind, so far. It reminds him a bit of the planet where he spent his formative years, except on Arkanis, it sometimes rained hard enough to bruise the skin. Pacifica 9 seems to have a gentler climate. Hux allows himself to lie there in the dark for a moment more, listening to the rain, wrapped in a blanket that smells like Ren.

For the six standard months they’ve been drifting through space, Hux has put off accepting Ren’s marriage proposal. He claims that he’d rather wait until they’re settled somewhere before doing anything drastic. Ren grumbles and complains about this almost daily—possibly because he suspects that Hux is just dragging it out for his own gratification. And, admittedly, that’s part of it. Hux had to wait all that time for Ren; it seems only fair that Ren should be forced to wait on him for a change.

Ren’s obsession with marriage is foolish, anyway. Hux has pointed out many times that they cannot be legally married: Wherever they go, they use fake identities, technically voiding the process before it begins. Besides, in Hux’s opinion, they cannot become more deeply entwined than they already are. They have a child together, for pity’s sake. For all intents and purposes, they already live as a married couple. He doesn’t see how repeating some trite old vows will change anything.

But against all good sense, Ren remains desperately attached to the concept of marriage. The act of the two of them being joined together, the actual ceremony, means something to him. Hux does not pretend to understand his logic. Usually, he does not pretend to understand Kylo Ren at all—he just accepts him, like an oddly endearing natural disaster.

Somewhat reluctantly, Hux climbs out of bed and gets dressed in the dark. It doesn’t matter what he grabs; the few items that make up his wardrobe are all interchangeable. Canvas work pants. Undershirt. Thin, slightly scratchy sweater.

For a moment, just a moment, he allows himself to think longingly of his officer’s uniform: the sleek dark fabric, the crisp lines. It’s not the uniform itself that he misses. Rather, it’s the ritual of dressing himself to regulation. Since he was a boy at the Academy, he’d donned a uniform every morning and known exactly who he was. There was something almost comforting about it, or at least familiar.

But that’s done now. He shouldn’t think of it anymore.

Hux finds Ren in the galley, a cramped space just off the communal area, wearing nothing but his underwear. He’s fiddling with the caf brewer, facing away, his back muscular and incredibly unfair. He’s got Shmi balanced on his hip.

“I think we should take a walk around the other side of the port today,” he’s saying to Shmi. He talks to her all the time, as earnestly as if she can talk back. “You’d like to see the ships come and go, wouldn’t you? We’ll ask Daddy about it when he wakes up.”

Shmi babbles in response. Ren laughs.

“Thank you for getting her,” Hux says, because he knows Ren likes to hear it now and then, and also because he means it.

Ren glances over his shoulder. “We’re having a good time. Aren’t we, Shmi?”

“Is that so?” As Hux comes closer, Shmi notices him for the first time, smiles, and coos. He smiles back reflexively as he takes her carefully from Ren, holding her against his chest. It’s odd—he doesn’t think he’s ever smiled as easily for anyone else.

He has a feeling they’re going to stay here, at least for a while. Strategically speaking, Pacifica 9 is a solid choice. In the smaller settlements around the Outer Rim, beings tend to view strangers with suspicion and take note of unfamiliar faces, which is the last thing that Hux and Ren want. But this city is just large enough for them to melt into the population, while Pacifica 9 itself is just small enough to go unnoticed by most who might be searching for them, be they bounty hunters or Resistance agents. It’s a sweet spot. Best of all, there’s enough activity in and around the port to keep them in steady work.

If they’re really going to stick around on this rainy moon, Hux thinks, they’ll need warmer clothes for the baby. He’ll also have to find a supplier for his maintenance injections, which promises to be a headache; though he’s managed to get his hands on the stuff so far, in a few different ports, testosterone is infinitely harder to acquire in the Outer Rim than it ever was in the First Order. And, of course, he’ll need a new excuse for why he can’t accept Ren’s proposal—he won’t be able to blame it on their nomadic lifestyle anymore.

Then again, Hux muses, if marrying Ren will shut him up, it would probably be worth it.

“All right, Kylo,” he says, looking up. “I suppose I’ll make an honest man of you yet.”

 

\--

 

Ren makes inquiries around the port before Hux has a chance to change his mind. He is directed to someone called Kem Wa’lai, the local magistrate—a self-appointed title, Hux strongly suspects, but one that apparently carries considerable weight in the community. Her duties as magistrate are vague but numerous, and apparently include officiating marriages. She also happens to be the local barkeep, and does all business out of her cantina. 

Hux and Ren seek her out that very day. They navigate from the port to the cantina on foot; by the time they arrive, they’re half-soaked from the rain, but Shmi is dry, tucked away under Hux’s jacket.

The cantina is surprisingly tidy and quiet, though that might be due to the time of day. It’s low-ceilinged, full of dim amber light, all the tables and chairs carved from the smooth dark timber that is this moon’s primary export. A few rough and bleary-looking aliens are scattered around the room, nursing drinks, no humans among them. In fact, since Hux and Ren landed here last week, they haven’t seen another human.

Kem Wa’lai turns out to be an alien of unfamiliar speciation, seven feet tall, with a long, craggy face and skin like cracked brown leather. Her slender arms bend with an extra joint. She’s behind the bar when Hux and Ren arrive, washing out glasses. Behind her, an impressive array of multicolored bottles glows faintly under the lights. Some of the labels are faded and peeling; fewer than half are printed in languages Hux can read.

Sawdust clings to Hux’s damp boots as he crosses to the bar, Ren at his side. A couple of aliens seated nearby glance up from their drinks, eyes glazed, but Kem Wa’lai does not yet deign to acknowledge the two of them, just keeps cleaning glasses.

Hux clears his throat. “We’ve been told that you perform marriages.”

For a moment, Kem says nothing, just stares at them with flat yellow eyes and works her jaw. Just when Hux is about to assume that she doesn’t speak Basic, she spits a clot of a thick, greenish substance that Hux sincerely hopes is chew into a dented spittoon and says, “Yeah, what of it?”

“We want you to marry us. Immediately, if possible.”

She gives them each a long, appraising look. Then her gaze lands on the baby, half-hidden by Hux’s jacket, who is attempting to extricate herself without success. “That thing yours?”

Ren grunts an affirmative. Hux says nothing.

“Uh-huh.” Kem looks a bit like she’s mulling something over. She leans her bony elbows on the bar. “So what’s with the mad rush?”

“We’re in love,” Ren says, darkly earnest, his eyes intense. Horrifyingly, he even squeezes Hux’s hand for emphasis. It takes every ounce of self-control that Hux possesses not to screw his face up in dismay. Part of him wants to hit Ren for being so unbelievably twee. “And we’ve just come off a long period of forced separation.”

A moment passes. Finally, Kem sets aside the glass she’s holding and wipes her hands on her off-white apron, apparently sufficiently moved. “Just sealing the deal, then, eh? Should’ve said so to begin with. We’ll do the quickie version. I’ll just need your names.” She smiles in a way that does not look entirely friendly, though that may have something to do with her double row of transparent teeth. “And the fee.”

“Of course,” Hux says, suppressing a sigh as he reaches for the hidden pocket inside his jacket. “How much?”

The fee is reasonable, and the ceremony doesn’t take long. There is no paperwork involved whatsoever, which Ren claims is the beauty of these kinds of weddings: fast, simple, cheap. Better yet, nobody asks any personal questions.

Hux and Ren stand in the middle of the dim barroom, hands clasped, and recite promises to share in each other’s pain and joy, to use the heat of anger to temper the strength of their union, to commit themselves wholly to each other as long as their love shall last. (Ren, presumably, will forget that bit about anger by tomorrow night.)

It’s all very quaint. Some might even consider it charming, in a rustic kind of way. Shmi, however, is teething and uncomfortable, and no amount of bouncing her against Hux’s shoulder will make her stop fussing. Halfway through the vows, he gives up on that approach and offers her one of his fingers to gum.

His whole life, Hux never imagined getting married. It’s not something he’d ever thought he would want. He especially had not envisioned getting married in a half-empty cantina in the middle of the afternoon, witnessed only by a few day-drinkers of indeterminate species, repeating his vows while trying to keep his hold on the infant squirming in his arms.

Only now, in this moment—looking into Ren’s scarred, endearing face, with Shmi industriously gumming his finger—does Hux realize how badly he has wanted this union with Ren, wanted it without truly understanding the shape and form and depth of his desire. It hits him like a punch to the chest. He’s embarrassed by the intensity of his own feelings, doubly so because of the way Ren is looking at him now: obviously pleased, even a little smug, like he knows exactly what is going through Hux’s head. And he probably does.

It strikes him suddenly that this is what Ren meant all along: that the legality of this ceremony doesn’t matter so much as the intention. The names they speak are fake, but the promises are real. Hux knows precisely to whom he is joining himself, and he knows why, just as Ren does. He has no grand romantic visions about their marriage, but whatever life they might have together, he wants it.

When all is said and done, Kem throws in a round of free drinks. “For the happy couple,” she says, with another harsh grin.

Hux and Ren exchange glances. Then they drink.

 

\--

 

By the time they get back to the ship, it’s dusk, and Shmi is exhausted from being toted around all day. She goes to sleep easily for once, though she may well wake a few hours from now in a crabby mood. Hux stands over the bassinet for a long minute, watching her breathe, slow and even. Once he’s satisfied that she is well and truly asleep, he lowers the lights, slips out of the cabin and gently shuts the door behind him. 

Ren is on him immediately. He kisses Hux almost angrily, gripping him around the hips and backing him against the cold bulkhead. For a moment, Hux is caught off-guard, but he is also slightly, pleasantly drunk, and kisses Ren back with enthusiasm that borders on sloppy. At length, he disentangles himself just enough to get more oxygen to his brain. 

“It’s our wedding night,” Ren says intently. His eyes are dark and bright, pupils already blown. He looks like he wants to break Hux in half—and right about now, Hux would let him.

“That it is,” Hux breathes, and crushes their mouths together.

They make it as far as the lounge seat in the common area, tripping over each other’s feet along the way. There isn’t much room to maneuver, especially not for people with limbs as long as theirs. Hux keeps opening his mouth to remind Ren that the lounge seat can fold out into a bed, but he never quite gets the words out.

Undressing is another problem. They grapple with each other’s clothes, impatiently tugging and yanking at buttons and zippers and sleeves, unwilling to stop kissing for more than a few heartbeats at a time. Hux is uncharacteristically clumsy, his hands almost shaking from excitement, like some virginal cadet. The intensity of his arousal is embarrassing and, frankly, unwarranted at this stage. They’ve barely done anything, and yet he shudders each time Ren touches some exposed patch of skin.

In the last six months, they’ve gotten each other off by hand when it was convenient—quick and efficient, with most of their clothes on—but nothing more intimate has passed between them. Has it really been so long since he let Ren touch him like this?

Somehow, Hux ends up on his back, lengthwise along the lounge seat, his shoulder blades pressed uncomfortably against the armrest. Ren kicks off his own pants and climbs on top of Hux, all elbows and knees.

For half a minute, they struggle to find a comfortable configuration of limbs, with limited success; at one point, Ren almost falls off the seat. Obligingly, Hux raises his hips so Ren can yank down his canvas work pants and underwear—and then, suddenly, it’s only skin on skin, for the first time in months.

Neither of them move at first. For a moment, their bodies pressed awkwardly together in the unflattering florescent light, they take each other in.

Ren’s body is pale and hard and broad, just the way Hux remembers. All the old marks are still there, mapped out across his creamy skin: the scatterings of dark moles, like inverted stars; the ruddy burn across his shoulder; the thick knot of scar tissue in his side, a remnant of the old bowcaster wound.

Hux’s body has never been a weapon. He’s always been lean and narrow, sharp-boned—built for command, not for combat. Of course, his stomach is softer now than it used to be, slightly rounded, and he has a niggling feeling it will stay that way. The weight he gained from carrying Shmi has mostly come off—months of physical work and cheap rations will have that effect—but the pale stretch marks remain: on his belly, his hips, his inner thighs.

If Ren notices any of those changes, he gives no sign. He doesn’t even say anything. He just descends on Hux again, calloused fingers digging into the yielding flesh of Hux’s hips hard enough to bruise, and kisses him in a devouring kind of way. Hux arches up to meet him. He clutches almost desperately at Ren’s broad back, his shoulders, everywhere he can reach.

“An apartment,” Hux hears himself say, hoarsely, dropping his head back as Ren finally abandons his mouth in favor of his throat. He closes his eyes, half-delirious just from the feel of Ren’s mouth on his skin: hot and wet and impossibly close. “First thing, we need an apartment. We may have to sell the ship. We could use the money to—”

“What are you talking about?” Ren raises his head with a frown.

“I’m not raising our daughter on a freighter,” Hux tells him. He feels like this should be obvious. “Now that we’re married, we might as well do things properly, and that means planning for—” A thought strikes him. He sits up halfway, almost unseating Ren. “Kriff, what about her education? I suppose it’s too much to hope for a decent school on this rock—”

“Do you really want to discuss that right now?”

For a moment, his head swimming, Hux pauses. Ren is straddling him, his mouth kiss-reddened, his eyes so dark that they seem to drink in the light. Hux swallows audibly. “Not particularly.”

“Good,” Ren says, and leans in again.

“Tell me you have barriers,” Hux says, between kisses. It would be a shame to stop now, but he’s never letting Ren inside him without a barrier again. He learned his lesson. “And lubricant.”

Ren hesitates, but only for a moment. Sounding as close to bashful as Hux as ever heard him, he says, “I may have made a pit stop this morning, on the way back.”

Hux gives a huffing breath. “Presumptuous of you.”

“Yes, well—” Ren leans in to nip the corner of Hux’s jaw, at the soft spot below his ear. “I had a good feeling.”

 

\--

 

Every morning when Hux shows up for work, before he does anything else, he removes his wedding ring and tucks it into an inner pocket of his coveralls. He prefers not to risk it catching on some moving part and ripping his finger off. 

It’s a plain band made of a dull, dark, slightly scratched metal that Hux hasn’t been able to identify. Ren wears a matching one, and he doesn’t take it off for anything. Hux is not entirely sure where the rings came from; Ren just presented them to him one night, darkly earnest, about a month after they were married. At the time, Hux made some noise about how ugly and cheap-looking the rings were, and about how the very concept of wedding rings was tacky and antiquated. But he let Ren slide the ring onto his finger all the same, and then returned the gesture.

If Ren can sense that, deep down, Hux actually _likes_ the ring—well, he apparently has enough sense not to mention it. Truth be told, Hux still thinks the ring is tacky. But wearing it, and seeing Ren wearing his, gives him a feeling of deep satisfaction. Maybe it’s mutual: _This man belongs to me, and no one else._

They’ve been on Pacifica 9 for eight standard months. As Hux predicted, it didn’t them long to find steady work—in a salvage yard this time, stripping the vehicles that get towed or dumped here for useful parts, repairing others. It’s grimier, more physically-demanding work than Hux has ever done before, but he’s good at it. Ren, for his part, seems oddly in his element here, working with his hands.

Sivian Roan, the salvage-yard owner, is about half Hux’s height, with small black eyes and wrinkled yellowish skin that hangs loosely on her bones. Her lower half is underdeveloped, with two vestigial limbs that pass for legs, and two sets of arms to make up for them. The upper pair is long and sturdy; to get around, Sivian places her knuckles on the ground ahead of her and swings her body forward. The other two arms are shorter and less specialized, used for practically everything else.

She’s a fair employer, Hux supposes, but he doesn’t much care for her. Truth be told, that has less to do with her than with him. Hux already built his life once, from the ground up; for a moment there, he was among the most important beings in the galaxy, the keeper of the power of destruction. And yet, here he is, taking orders from a moldering old xeno on a backwater world. It chafes him to be in this position. He longs to have something of his own again—a domain to oversee, no matter how small.

A battered old drop ship was hauled into the yard last cycle; Sivian’s got Hux and Ren stripping it this shift. It’s unlikely to yield much of value—the ship is a few decades old and practically falling apart, but at least much of the corroded durasteel can be resold for scrap.

Around midday, Hux and Ren stop working long enough to eat the food they brought with them, the cold remains of last night’s dinner. They sit near the open hatch door, close enough that their hips and shoulders brush. Rain drums against the hull and streams along the edges of the hatch. There’s a distant clanging of metal, echoing across the yard.

Through the blue-gray haze outside, the other ships and speeders scattered throughout the yard look like the shadows of hulking animals. Some of them, Hux knows, have been here long enough to be covered in dark vines, like grasping hands. That’s the trouble with the constant rain—metal goes quickly to greenery and rust, claimed by the landscape.

Looking out into the rain, Hux asks, “Do you want to die here?”

Ren glances up from his bowl, eyebrows drawn together. He swallows what’s in his mouth. “Well—not _right_ here, no.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Hux presses his lips together. “Would you really be content to spend the rest of your life on this moon, and eventually die here? If we never left this place again, could you be… happy?” Hux doesn’t deal much in questions of happiness, normally. It’s too subjective a concept, too hard to gauge. But he’s had cause to think of it lately.

“I hadn’t really thought of it,” Ren admits.

“Naturally. You don’t like to look farther ahead than your next meal.”

Ren kicks at Hux’s ankle for that. “I mean that I’m not concerned about the location. I’d be all right anywhere we lived together.” He pauses, then, and levels a serious look at Hux. His heavy brows are drawn together. “Are you unhappy?”

“No,” Hux says immediately, and the strange thing is that it’s true. “But what about Shmi? It’s over for the two of us, I know that. There’s nothing left for us to do—nothing that matters, anyway. But she can’t spend her whole life on a tiny moon at the edge of habitable space. She wouldn’t be satisfied. We can’t strand her in a place like this, with nothing to call her own.”

“We haven’t chained her up in a basement,” Ren says with a huff. “If she grows up and wants to do something that’s not possible here, I figure she’ll just go somewhere else to do it.” A frown crosses his face. “What’s this really about?”

Hux just shakes his head dismissively. “Nothing. I’m fixating again, that’s all.”

Ren looks unconvinced. “Hux,” he says, in a low voice, questioning. It’s not a slip-up—Ren has never once accidentally called Hux by his real name outside of their home. He must’ve said it now on purpose, presumably only risking it because no one else is around.

“Don’t call me that here,” Hux says, and leans in to kiss Ren on the mouth. He does it half to shut Ren up and half because he wants to. “It’s for when we’re alone.”

For a moment, Ren seems to consider that. Then he presses a kiss to the corner of Hux’s mouth, as if an agreement.

They finish eating in silence, watching the rain.

 

\--

 

By the time Hux gets back to the apartment complex—a hulking utilitarian structure, all dull gray duracrete—it’s drizzling from a dark sky. Lights are coming alive up and down every street, glowing hazy neon colors, shrouded in the rain. He walks home with Ren, usually, but tonight, Ren has stayed late at the scrap yard to finish stripping the repulsorcables off a new freighter that came in. 

Hux ducks into the lobby, where the overhead lights flicker uneasily, and shakes off the hood his jacket. Muddy footprints in a variety of shapes and sizes crisscross the pale gray tile, though the lobby is currently empty but for him. He bypasses the ancient elevator entirely—it only works half the time, and even when it does, it’s still faster to take the stairs.

Upon reaching his floor, Hux doesn’t go to his unit right away. Instead, he knocks on the door directly across the hall.

Bheela Drex, their neighbor and regular babysitter, opens the door. Hux hasn’t been able to nail down her species, and at this point, it would be impolite to ask. She’s plainly amphibious, though: smooth, mottled green skin, always inexplicably dewy; webbed hands; broad, flipper-like feet that are rather ungainly on land. She has a serene, oval-shaped face and wide-set, glistening eyes.

An elderly alien widow, she doesn’t get many visitors and attached herself to Hux and Ren shortly after they moved in. On a weekly basis, she presents them with casseroles that Hux fears are not actually fit for human consumption and can only be properly digested by members of her species. (Ren always wolfs them down without complaint; his digestive tract appears to be made of durasteel.) 

Bheela is, objectively, very kind. Hux understands this on a clinical level, but for the life of him, he cannot see the point. He hates engaging in small talk; it’s tedious and makes him feel unbearably common. But he makes a determined effort at politeness because he and Ren are pretending to be an ordinary couple. They cannot avoid seeing Bheela every day—and besides, they need her to continue watching Shmi while they’re at work. 

When Ren first suggested asking Bheela to babysit, Hux violently rejected the idea of leaving his baby in the care of some strange old xeno all day. But they couldn’t exactly trundle Shmi along with them to the scrap yard, and Ren swore up and down that Bheela was harmless—more Force-related mysticism, apparently.

In the end, Hux came around to the idea, out of necessity. And though he’s loathe to admit it, he has been pleasantly surprised. He wouldn’t say he trusts Bheela—he doesn’t genuinely trust anyone but Ren—but she does a capable job of watching Shmi, who is in turn fascinated by their alien neighbor. Mostly, Hux thinks, she likes Bheela’s coloring, which Bheela herself seems to find highly entertaining.

“Oh, Niall!” Bheela greets him, in her watery voice. “Already that time?” She glances behind her, into her dim unit, which always smells faintly of lake water. “Shmi, your father’s come to get you!”

Somewhere just out of sight, small feet slap the linoleum. A moment later, Shmi is careening toward the open door as fast as her fourteen-month-old legs will take her. Hux immediately bends to scoop her up, which is murder on his back at the end of the workday—Shmi is big for her age—but it’s made worth it by her delighted shriek.

To Bheela, Hux says, “I trust she was well-behaved?”

“No trouble at all. She was very good. Weren’t you, little thing?” Bheela taps Shmi’s forehead in what Hux assumes is an affectionate gesture; Shmi scrunches her face up happily. Then Bheela glances around at the empty hall. “Eben hasn’t come home with you?”

“He’ll be along in another hour or so,” Hux says, feeling vaguely apprehensive.

“It’s just as well—I was hoping to catch you alone. Now, I don’t mean to be nosy, dear,” Bheela begins, in a loud whisper. She says that a lot, actually, and it’s always a bad sign. Hux braces himself. “But last night, I couldn’t help but overhear the two of you arguing about Eben’s mother.”

“Did you?” Hux asks faintly. Bheela is somewhat hard of hearing, so the fact that she managed to pick out anything specific from across the hall is a testament to just how loud the arguing had been. Hux is faintly embarrassed. In the heat of the moment, he never thinks of things like that, but later, he regrets airing their dirty laundry for all the neighbors to hear. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mrs. Drex.”

They were indeed arguing about Ren’s mother last night, though it didn’t start that way. Leia Organa comes up in their fights more than she probably should, all things considered—but Hux still hasn’t quite forgiven Ren for keeping her a secret. Maybe he never will. He’s not forgiving by nature, and it’s not a capacity he’s ever cared to cultivate in himself.

“You know, dear,” Bheela says solemnly, bending her head closer to Hux’s, as if sharing an important secret. “Everyone has problems with their mother-in-law. It’s a universal thing—all species, you understand. I had such rows with my Winnik over his mother. Horrible woman! Impossible to please. Always trying to put herself between the two of us. Of course, she’s dead now.” Bheela does not sound especially grieved about this. “Though I can’t imagine what Eben’s mother might be complaining about. You’ve given her a grandchild. What else is there?”

_Well, there is the matter of the Hosnian System,_ Hux thinks. He coughs a little. “I couldn’t say.”

“I don’t know much about human children, of course,” Bheela adds. She gestures to Shmi, who is gazing at her in rapt attention, possibly hypnotized by her glistening green skin. “But this little one of yours seems quite fine to me.” 

“That’s very kind of you say so, Mrs. Drex,” Hux says graciously. “However, I’m afraid I don’t—”

“But, really, dear, you won’t get anywhere arguing like that,” she goes on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Nobody ever changed their mate’s mind by shouting. I’m sure you’ve noticed that by now.”

“Well, I suppose—”

She places a damp, sympathetic hand on his arm. “The next time Eben’s mother makes it a choice between standing by you and appeasing her, you have to remind him that _you_ are his mate. He’s already chosen you! Now, you must be very firm about this…”

It takes Hux thirty minutes to extricate himself from the conversation. Really, it’s more of a lecture. He spends most of it nodding along, making noises of agreement in the right places, and learning infinitely more about Bheela’s marriage and her late mother-in-law than he ever cared to know. He has to set Shmi down at one point; her wriggling has become unmanageable, and his upper back is killing him. 

“You’re a nice young couple, anyone can see that,” Bheela says at last, with a wistful sigh, patting Hux’s arm. “I’m sure it will all work itself out in time. Communication is key, that’s all.”

“Yes, I’ll keep that in mind, Mrs. Drex,” Hux says numbly. He wonders how she can possibly still think of them as a _nice young couple_ when she hears them screaming at each other across the hall every few nights. “And, of course, I appreciate you watching Shmi. I would hate to keep you any longer.”

“Oh, it’s quite all right, I’m not in any great rush—”

“And I really ought to get Shmi something to eat,” he adds, a bit desperately. He corrals Shmi closer to him. “All right, say goodbye to Mrs. Drex.”

“Bye-bye,” Shmi says, mimicking Hux’s wave.

In short order, Bheela has slipped back inside her unit and Hux is unlocking his own door.

Ultimately, Hux and Ren sold the freighter. Neither of them was thrilled to part with their only means of getting off-world, but they couldn’t have all their credits tied up in a ship. Liquid assets are essential, in case they find themselves on the run again. Besides, in a pinch, they can acquire another ship easily enough. It wouldn’t be Ren’s first time commandeering a vessel.

Ever since the ship sold, the three of them have lived in this modest unit, not far from the port where they first touched down. There’s not much to it: a tiny sitting room with an adjoined kitchenette, a single bedroom, a refresher. They haven’t bothered to decorate; Hux doesn’t think the secondhand furniture they’ve picked up here and there counts. On the sitting room shelf is a single holophoto of the three of them, from the day Hux and Ren were married. (Kem strong-armed them into letting her take it before she allowed them to leave the cantina—part of the “wedding package,” apparently.)

It’s a bit shabby for Hux’s taste, not exactly the living arrangements he had envisioned for them, but it meets their basic needs. Like the job at the salvage yard, he reminds himself that this is temporary.

Hux deposits Shmi on the rug in the sitting room, along with her painted wooden blocks. Once she’s occupied, he ducks into the bedroom for a change of clothes, and then into the refresher to wash up.

At least the unit has its own refresher, Hux thinks, rather than a communal one for the whole floor. It’s about the size of a closet, but it’s a testament to this rainy little moon’s best feature: no water ration. Never in his life has Hux had access to as much clean, fresh water as he wants at any given time, not even on board the _Finalizer_ —but, no, he tries not to think about the _Finalizer._ It wasn’t that long ago, really, but it feels like a bygone era, almost as if it all happened to somebody else.

Hux briskly scrubs his hands in the sink, which are caked in grime and engine grease. The water turns black as it swirls around the drain at first, then gray, before it finally runs clear. He gives his face a cursory wash, too, but he’ll wait to shower until Ren gets home, so Shmi isn’t left unsupervised.

He showers exclusively; he’s much too tall for the tub and doesn’t bother with it. Ren is even bigger and broader, of course, but it’s never stopped him from cramming his whole, ridiculous body into the shallow tub with Shmi, who is always delighted to have someone to splash. 

As he changes out of his oil-stained coveralls, Hux thinks back on his conversation with Bheela. He and Ren do argue, though Hux likes to think they argue less than they once did. Then again, maybe not. They fight over small things, like the way clothes are put away, and over big things, like how and when they’ll explain their messy history to Shmi. And they fight about things that shouldn’t matter anymore, yet still hang like a pall between them—things like Leia Organa. 

At least they haven’t hit each other yet, though not for lack of temptation. Ren puts his fist through a wall every now and then; Hux sometimes throws dishes and cups, once threw all of Ren’s clothes out the window and onto the wet street. No matter how the next-door neighbors pound on the wall between their units in protest of the racket, it never gets them to stop screaming at each other—Ren just pounds back, more aggressively. In fact, the only thing that consistently stops them is when Shmi begins to cry, frightened by the noise.

Ren cries too, sometimes, when it’s all over and the mess has been cleaned up—out of remorse, or shame, or guilt, or some other emotion that doesn’t affect Hux the same way. These displays used to shock Hux, even disgust him a little. Now, though, he just listens to Ren’s miserable noises and wordlessly strokes his hair until he quiets.

It’s strange, but they both tend to sleep well after a night of arguing. Exhaustion, probably.

In the sitting room, Shmi is stacking blocks with a look of determination. She looks more like Ren every day, Hux thinks, with her big ears and her thick dark hair and her wide range of pouts. She throws fits like Ren, too. Hux hopes she grows out of that eventually.

He goes to sit beside her, his knees creaking slightly in protest, and places another block at the top of the tower. Immediately, Shmi thrusts her hands out and topples the tower, laughing when the colored blocks go spilling across the rug. Hux sighs and kisses the top of her head.

“Destructive like your father,” he mutters, into her hair. Then he picks up another block and offers it to Shmi. “All right, darling. Shall we start again?”

She looks up at him with an eager smile. “Yes!”

 

\--

 

Rain is lashing the windows when Ren gets home, almost an hour later, and Hux is still playing on the floor with Shmi. Ren shucks his boots at the door, peels off his dripping coat, and hangs it on the hook beside the door—a habit that took months to instill in him. He used to just drop his wet things carelessly and leave them for Hux to pick up. 

As he crosses the sitting room, Ren stoops to press a noisy kiss to the top of Shmi’s head, which elicits a delighted squeal from her. “There’s my best girl,” he says. “Were you good for Mrs. Drex today?”

“Allegedly,” Hux says. He feels Ren looking at him, easing close; out of habit, he turns his face to accept a kiss himself. Ren’s hand lingers on Hux’s waist for a moment before he straightens and slips into the bedroom to change out of his work clothes.

Even a year ago, Hux never would’ve thought he could be this familiar with Ren, never dreamed they could have this kind of casual intimacy. The Hux of that period would’ve felt nothing for contempt at this softened version of himself—but the Hux of now has come to rather enjoy it.

“It went all right, then?” Hux calls.

“Mmm. Most of the cables were in decent shape—we can use them to fix up something else. Maybe that shuttle Sivian’s been hanging onto. It doesn’t need much done.” He comes out of the bedroom barefoot, pulling a loose-fitting white shirt over his head. “Hey, what do you want for dinner?” 

Hux doesn’t cook if he can help it. He’s spent most of his life subsisting on various types of military rations; even as a general, he mostly ate what his soldiers did, unless he was attending some nauseating dinner function. Compared to rehydrated rations formulated to meet nutritional needs, everything else seems needlessly complicated.

The way Hux sees it, if he can manage all the household upkeep—Ren has apparently never been made to wash anything in his life, and has made it clear that he isn’t about to start now—then Ren can manage their meals. It was strange and difficult in the beginning, dividing up domestic chores like this, but they’re working out the kinks as they go along.

Later that evening finds Hux scrubbing dishes in the kitchen sink, spoons and dented metal plates bought secondhand. Behind him, Shmi sits at the table in her high chair, kicking her legs aimlessly while Ren feeds her a mushy soup of rice and meat. She’s already got food smeared around her mouth and spattered on her bib. Before long, she’ll have it on her hands, and will probably manage to get it in her hair.

Hux always knew, logically, that children are messy, but he could not have anticipated the reality. Shmi is constantly sticky, and he doesn’t understand where all the residue is coming from. He used to wipe and wipe at her face with a damp cloth, an endless chore. It proved impossible to truly keep on top of her stickiness, especially now that she’s toddling around. Lately, he’s fallen into the habit of just licking the pad of his thumb and rubbing the dirt off her face. 

It doesn’t help that she can throw food with her mind. Shmi is a willful child—which Hux supposes shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, considering her fathers. If she doesn’t want to eat something, it usually ends up splattered on the wall. Hux does not find this behavior the slightest bit cute; Ren, however, is enchanted. He often speaks of his plans to teach Shmi the ways of the Force, the power of the dark side, all the mystical things that Hux does not pretend to fully appreciate. 

He wonders, sometimes, what Ren was like as a child, if his power manifested as early as Shmi’s has. He can’t imagine, and he doesn’t ask; even now, Ren doesn’t like to speak about his childhood or the people who raised him, except in the most abstract terms. They don’t discuss Ren’s past so much as they argue about it now and then, at the top of their lungs.

Shmi will only get stronger from here, Hux knows that much. He just isn’t sure how he’ll cope with it as she grows up. It’s almost funny—here is yet another thing he has in common with Leia Organa. Before long, he supposes he’ll know all about the myriad difficulties of raising a Force-sensitive child. He may even come to sympathize with the old woman, he thinks wryly. But at least he won’t ship his daughter across the galaxy because he doesn’t know how to tame her. That’s one experience he’s sworn that he will never share with Organa.

“No,” Shmi says suddenly, turning her face away as Ren lifts the spoon to her mouth again.

“You like this,” Ren tells her, as if she can be reasoned with. “You were just eating it. Come on, open up—”

Shmi throws up her pudgy hands and the rice shoots away from her. Ren catches it midair with a twitch of his fingers and an almost idle application of the Force. With the same technique, he returns the rice to the spoon and attempts to feed it to Shmi again. This time, she just presses her lips together in refusal, shaking her head. It takes some coaxing and cooing on Ren’s part to get her to open her mouth and accept another bite.

“There we go,” Ren says, in that particular warm voice reserved only for Shmi. A nanny droid can do a great many things, Hux thinks, but it just can’t replicate human affection. He understands that now, the value of it, when he never did before. “That’s my good girl.”

“Kylo,” Hux says, scrubbing at a stubborn bit of food residue.

“What?”

“You’ve seen that vacant building south of the port, haven’t you? About a block over from the Calamari noodle shop?”

“The one with the ugly green siding?”

“That’s the one.”

“I know it.” Ren is making exaggerated biting and swallowing motions in an attempt to encourage Shmi. “What about it?”

“It’s for sale, you know. I walk past a few times a week, and I’ve seen the sign hanging out front.”

Ren hums. “I think it’s been for sale as long as we’ve lived here,” he says. “Longer than that, probably. There’s a reason no one’s bought it—the place is completely run-down.”

“At the present, yes, but the bare bones are there,” Hux tells him. He glances down at his hands, wrist-deep in cloudy dishwater. “I’ve looked around inside. There’s a nice open space down below—enough room for a few speeders, easily, maybe even a shuttle. Water hookups. Electrical. And there’s an apartment upstairs. It could be worth something, if the right buyers put some work into it.”

“And when you say ‘the right buyers,’ you mean…” Ren lets the question hang.

Hux sighs and turns around, leaning back against the edge of the sink. He might as well be direct. “We have most of the freighter money,” he says. “We can afford the down payment, plus a little more. The rest can go toward renovations and keeping us fed until everything’s in working order. Once that’s taken care of, we’ll open the garage and live upstairs.”

“Uh-huh,” Ren says, attempting to spoon another bite into Shmi’s mouth. Half of it dribbles down her chin.

“It would be better for Shmi,” Hux goes on, feeling compelled to make his case. He can’t tell what Ren is thinking and it’s making him oddly nervous. “A more comfortable living all around. More stability. And it would be better for the two of us. Imagine—no neighbors to pound on the walls. You can throw all the tantrums you like.”

“So you want to pour all our savings into renovating a shitty old garage,” Ren says, slowly, like he’s trying to make sure he understands correctly. His brow is furrowed. “Sounds risky.”

“A calculated risk,” Hux says, a bit defensive despite himself. “I’ve been running the idea backward and forward for months. I can make it work.” He pauses, swallows a little, and clarifies: “We can make it work.”

Ren looks up at him then, almost gravely. He appears to be mulling something over. “That’s what you were talking about before,” he says, and it’s not a question. “You want to build something so you can give it to her.”

For a moment, Hux can’t respond, embarrassed by Ren’s frankness. He clears his throat. “We won’t be around forever,” he says at last. “And she ought to have some kind of inheritance, shouldn’t she? She could keep the place and run it, or sell it, or do whatever she likes. But she’d have _something._ We wouldn’t have left her with nothing to stand on.”

“You really want to do this, don’t you?”

“I’m a man of great ambition,” Hux says wryly.

Ren doesn’t laugh. He just smiles. “That you are.”

 

\--

 

Hux wakes to something attempting to twist his nose off his face. He opens his eyes, blinking at the darkened bedroom—and there is Shmi, standing beside the bed, pawing at his face. 

For a bleary moment, he’s just annoyed to have been woken at this hour. Then he remembers that Shmi sleeps just outside their bedroom, in a crib with rails she’s not big enough to climb over. She shouldn’t be here. Hux sits up halfway, scrubbing a hand over his face, trying to fully wake up.

Having successfully roused him, Shmi is now attempting to crawl up onto the bed. She grabs at the blanket, tries to pull herself up and inevitably slides back down, her little bare feet hitting the floor with a quiet patter.

Hux shoves at Ren’s shoulder. “Kylo. Kylo, wake up.”

Ren makes a muzzy noise.

“Wake _up_ , you useless lump,” Hux whispers, shoving more insistently. Ren is so obscenely _solid_ that he barely budges. “Shmi got out of her crib. She shouldn’t be able to do that. How did she do that, Kylo? Kylo—”

“She’s strong in the Force,” Ren mumbles, into the pillow. “Stop poking me.”

“That is not a sufficient explanation!”

“Don’t be angry with her.” Ren doesn’t bother to raise his head or even open his eyes. “She can’t help it. She doesn’t even know what she’s doing.”

“I’m not _angry_ with her. I’m trying to figure out how—oh, darling, just come here—” Hux reaches down to pull Shmi into his arms. Then he nudges Ren again, bitterly. “I suppose I’ll deal with it, since you can’t be bothered.”

“Thank you,” Ren says drowsily.

“You’re not welcome.”

Still holding Shmi, Hux gets up and pads into the sitting room. A couple of months ago, they finally moved her crib out of their bedroom. It’s good for her to sleep on her own, Hux reasons—and besides, it’s become impossible to maintain any semblance of an adequate sex life with her sleeping in the same room. Hux wasn’t surprised by the bedtime tantrums when they first made the change, which have become less frequent, but he had no idea she could take matters into her own hands like this.

“What have you done now, Shmi?” Hux asks despairingly, standing in front of the crib. Her blanket and little plush bantha are strewn about like victims at a crime scene. As far as he can tell, Shmi used the Force to unlatch the side of the crib, then dropped down onto the floor and toddled into the bedroom. Hux heaves a long-suffering sigh. “You can’t stand to make anything easy for me, can you?”

Shmi just giggles.

“I suppose you think that’s very endearing,” Hux says. “I’ll have you know, I don’t find you at all cute at this time of night.” He presses a kiss to her cheek anyway, which makes her squeal and cackle at the scratchiness of his beard. 

For a minute more, he inspects the crib, deeply concerned by this development. While he doesn’t relish the idea of fashioning some kind of dome or cage that fits over the top of the crib, he’ll have to devise a way to keep Shmi from escaping. She can’t be allowed to wander the unit all night; she’ll inevitably hurt herself. Either he finds a way to contain her, or she’ll have to go back to sleeping in their room, which is far from ideal. 

He’ll think of something. If he could build his glorious machine, he can keep a toddler in her crib. At least, he sincerely hopes so.

When he attempts to put Shmi back in her crib, she squirms and struggles and whines.

In the end, Hux surrenders. He has to get up for work in a few hours; he can’t wrestle with Shmi all night. “Oh, all right,” he mutters, feeling ridiculous and overindulgent as he carries her into the bedroom. He certainly never clambered into his father’s bed as a child—it would never have occurred to him to try. “But you can’t sleep in our bed forever, darling. I mean it.”

He places her on the bed and climbs in wearily. General Hux, bested by a toddler. He’s a little disappointed in himself. 

Ren, predictably, has already fallen back asleep. Hux does his best to follow suit, as Shmi burrows into the narrow space between them.

 

\-- 

 

“I think the compressor’s finally died on me,” says Bletsam Chiff, as Hux slides out from under the speeder he was working on. Chiff is a regular customer, a burly blue-skinned humanoid with a long, angular face and a pair of white horns jutting from his brow that he keeps filed to stubs. “Think Eben could take a look?" 

Hux sits up and wipes his grease-stained hands on a rag, considering. Chiff owns a vintage Corellian speeder, iridescent silver, one of the old KT-700 models with sweeping fins and hypersensitive controls. It requires both unusual parts and the right touch. Any mechanic could order the parts, but not everyone has Ren’s way with classic speeders—a skill he picked up in another life, apparently—so Bletsem always brings it here, to Ren and Hux’s garage. 

“I’m sure he’d be glad to get his hands on it again,” Hux assures him. Really, what Ren likes best is taking the speeder for a test drive once he’s completed the repairs, just to be sure everything’s humming the way it ought to. The speeder maneuvers like a dream, apparently. “He always is.”

Chiff makes a throaty gurgling noise that Hux now knows is a laugh. “And I’m glad he feels that way. I sure as hell don’t trust anyone else with it.”

“Go ahead and bring it in tomorrow and we’ll get it sorted,” Hux says.

“I’ll do that,” Chiff says, nodding, as Hux gets to his feet.

They bid each other goodnight; it’s just about closing time, anyway. When Hux is alone in the garage, he takes a moment to survey the place, the little domain he shares with Ren.

The garage was a mess when they first bought it, barely worth the credits they’d paid—but Hux’s most valuable talent has always been his ability to see the true potential of a thing and draw it forth. Over the course of several months, the garage took shape. He and Ren did most of the renovation work themselves; between the two of them, Hux has learned, they can manage mostly anything.

And now, almost three years later, it’s the working garage that Hux had envisioned at the start: clean, spacious, professional. Every bay is full, including the ones out back. Now that their reputation for quality work has gone around, they never want for business, and he doubts they will any time soon.

It’s no Starkiller Base, no glorious machine—but Hux is proud of it all the same.

In the last two and a half years, he and Ren have slowly built their reputation as a pair of respectable mechanics. Everyone in this neighborhood knows that the two of them were formally bound together by Kem Wa’lai, which laid the groundwork. That ceremony in the cantina tied them to this place, and though many of the local aliens still view them with a kind of benign confusion—humans are rare around these parts—they’ve been more or less accepted as part of the community.

Hux’s days are not as relentlessly busy as they were when he commanded the Order’s flagship, but he’s come to realize that may not be a bad thing. He’s occupied in other ways—with running the garage, and being married to Ren, and raising Shmi. At the end of the day, he is pleasantly tired, and when pale sunlight wakes him in the morning, he has a reason to get out of bed.

Dusk is gathering, misty and blue, so Hux locks up for the night. He puts on his wedding ring as he slips outside, doing up the final lock behind him. Then he circles around the back and climbs the narrow stairwell that leads to their apartment. It’s full of warm yellow light and the smell of cooking food—Ren has gotten dinner started.

The apartment is modest but comfortable, big enough for the three of them. There’s even a proper kitchen, with space enough for a decent table, something Hux had never dreamed he’d come to consider a luxury. And unlike the unit where they lived before, they—namely Hux—have decorated a bit, each piece gathered with the rest in mind. A few more holophotos have joined the one from their wedding, mostly of Shmi, lined upon a shelf in the sitting room.

All told, it looks like people actually live here, infinitely more so than Hux’s old quarters on the _Finalizer_ ever had. There’s something satisfying about that.

As he passes Shmi’s bedroom on the way to the refresher, Hux pauses at the muffled sounds he hears and pokes his head in. Shmi is camped out on the floor, having what looks like a serious discussion with several of her cloth dolls, so focused on what she’s doing that she doesn’t notice him at all. Her dark hair has been freed from its usual braid, so it falls around her face, thick and wavy. Hux lacks the patience and finesse to manage her hair, so it’s become Ren’s responsibility. Every morning, without fail, he carefully combs it out and braids it back, his big calloused hands surprisingly dexterous. Hux doesn’t know for certain where Ren learned to braid hair like that, but he has his suspicions.

He watches her from the doorway for a moment, as she confers gravely with her toys. It’s strange—he used to think of nothing but himself, of how he could climb higher, accrue more power. Selfishness was always easy, and in some ways, it still is. He just chooses differently now, because he has her: his daughter, who comes first in all things.

She turned three a few months ago, and Hux still can’t quite believe it. Somehow, it feels as if the last few years happened in the blink of an eye, like he missed it all. Not so long ago, Shmi depended on him for everything, and now…

He keeps reminding himself that she’s only three. It’s not all happening as quickly as it seems. There’s plenty of time left before she doesn’t need him or Ren for anything. Plenty of time.

Shaking himself mentally, he heads to the refresher to wash up and change out of his work clothes. Finally, he goes to join Ren in the kitchen.

“Chiff is bringing the KT-700 in tomorrow,” Hux says, by way of greeting.

“It’s the compressor, isn’t it?” Ren doesn’t look up from the stove, where he’s browning meat in a skillet. His hair is pulled back into a messy knot, out of his face, and his sleeves are rolled up to his forearms. “I told him not to ride it so hard—it was bound to give out, old model like that.”

“Will you have to track down a  replacement part?”

“Probably. But Chiff will have figured that already.”

Hux makes a vague noise of agreement while his eyes slid up and down Ren’s body. Three years of living together as ordinary people, and he’s still struck by the sight of Ren like this: comfortably domestic, a universe away from Snoke’s war dog. He wonders what Ren sees when he looks at Hux now, if it’s someone greater or lesser than the general he had once been.

Ren still carries his lightsaber on his person, but he hasn’t switched it on even once since all this began, and he never uses the Force outside their home. Likewise, Hux hasn’t yet had cause to draw his blaster. He often wonders how long this can last, how long they can possibly live quietly together without being recognized. It almost seems like it shouldn’t be allowed—like they’ve cheated, somehow, and this is their ill-gotten reward.

Most nights, after they’ve eaten dinner and washed up, Hux goes over the day’s accounts while Ren rolls around on the sitting-room rug with Shmi, or chases her around the apartment until she’s breathless with laughter, or delights her with Force tricks. He’s beginning to work with her in small ways, giving her lessons in Force usage disguised as games.

Hux, meanwhile, is teaching her the Aurebesh alphabet. She can write her name and a few other words, albeit crudely, which Hux considers good progress for her age. Whenever Ren raises his eyebrows, Hux reminds him that a well-rounded education is vital—and, in Hux’s opinion, it’s never too early to start. He reads to her nightly, and tonight is no different.

He sits on the couch and beckons Shmi over. “What do you want to read tonight, darling?”

“The blue man!” Shmi says immediately, clambering into his lap. “Read about the blue man. And the pretty lizards.”

“Grand Admiral Thrawn,” Hux corrects her, while his husband huffs loudly in the background. Ren tousles Shmi’s hair with one big hand as he passes the couch, on his way to the bedroom to meditate. “And his ysalamiri. Do you remember what ysalamiri do?”

Shmi screws up her face in an exaggeration of thinking. Then she shakes her head. “No, Daddy.”

“They repel the Force,” Ren calls, his voice now muffled through the bedroom door. “So you should stay away from them, Shmi. They’re bad for you.”

“You’re supposed to be meditating,” Hux says loudly. He picks up his datapad from the end table while Shmi settles against him. She peers at the glowing screen with interest. “Now, where were we? Ah, yes—Grand Admiral Thrawn had just arrived at the compound to meet with Talon Karrde…”

When Hux first began this nightly routine, he found that most of the usual texts for children were too frivolous for his tastes, while those of historical interest were too dense and dry to hold Shmi’s attention. To solve the problem, Hux took it upon himself to write a few age-appropriate stories about the achievements of notable Imperials. Ren can roll his eyes all he wants—the stories are both engaging and historically accurate, full of battles and betrayals and heroic deeds. Hux sometimes embroiders the narrative a bit, imitating the sounds of TIE fighter engines and blaster fire as necessary.

Shmi had immediately taken to Thrawn. Apparently, all it takes to win her over is blue skin. It’s just as well—Hux thinks it’s good for her to have role models, and Thrawn was one of his when he was growing up.

He reads until Shmi’s eyes begin to droop. Then he sets the datapad aside, carefully shifts her into his arms and carries her into her room.

 

\--

 

That night, in their darkened bedroom, Hux lies half-asleep in Ren’s arms. He can feel Ren breathing, the expansion of his ribcage, slow and regular. All is quiet but the rain on the roof—a pleasant sound, one that regularly puts Hux to sleep. 

And then, out of the blue, Ren whispers, “Hux?”

“Mm?”

“Let’s have another baby.”

Hux’s eyes blink open almost of their own accord. For a long moment, he squints into the darkness, sure he misheard—but, no, Ren actually said that. He can feel Ren beside him, his body tense, waiting for some answer. Fortunately for him, Hux is drowsy and not inclined to immediately explode. “I will give you one chance to take that back,” he says.

“Why would I take it back?” Ren sounds genuinely, stupidly confused.

That does it. Hux swats the bedside lamp and shoves the blankets back, sitting up so he can glower to full effect. A pool of yellow light splashes across the bed.

Ren is blinking rapidly, his eyes adjusting to the light. “You’re upset.”

“How very observant,” Hux says witheringly. He struggles to keep his voice down, aware of Shmi in the next room, not wanting to wake her. “I’m in awe of your ability to read social cues.”

“But—you’re not supposed to—” Ren’s dark brows are drawn together in bewilderment. He props himself up onto his elbows, looking faintly lost. “I thought you would be glad.”

“Of course you would think that.” Hux practically spits the words at him. He’s offended by how casually Ren bought it up—like it’s a simple decision, like Hux wouldn’t be committing the better part of a year to being a human incubator, plus another year to fully recover, plus another two decades to raise the product. “I’m sure having a baby seems like a very nice idea when you’re not the one who has to carry it and push it out. I hated being pregnant, every minute of it. Do you have any idea what carrying Shmi actually did to my body? No, I suppose you don’t, or you wouldn’t have made such a stupid suggestion—”

“Hux—”

“I was in labor for _eighteen hours._ Do you understand that? Eighteen hours, which I spent in horrible pain.” Hux had been alone for the whole ordeal, save for a pair of medidroids, and alone again when it was done. Looking back, he thinks that was the most unbearable thing, even if he’s never admitted as much to anyone. He can’t do that again. He’s not even sure how he did it the first time. “We are not small people, Kylo, neither of us, and Shmi was not a small baby—”

“You wouldn’t be alone,” Ren says suddenly, as if he’s just read Hux’s mind, and maybe he has. Sitting up, he reaches out to touch Hux, to smooth a big hand along his side. Despite himself, Hux doesn’t shove him away. “I’ll be there to help you this time. With everything. I would take good care of you until you have the baby—you and Shmi. And we’d be so much better at it the second time around. We’d actually know what we’re doing.”

“For pity’s sake, stop babbling,” Hux says sharply—and to his surprise, Ren actually does, looking wounded. Hux rubs at his eyes with one hand. He feels about twice as tired as he did a minute ago. “Where is this even coming from? We don’t need another child! Shmi is more than enough.”

Ren doesn’t speak for a moment, his eyes caught on a crease in the blanket. Then, almost cautiously, he says, “Shmi isn’t like other children.”

“Obviously. Do you think it’s escaped my notice?”

“No. But you can’t understand what it’s going to be like for her, and I do. I remember. She should have someone like her.”

Hux frowns. “What, to keep her company? Don’t be ridiculous. You do that for pets, Kylo, not children—”

“You’re not listening!” Ren snaps, loudly enough that they’re both caught by surprise. He takes a shallow breath and seems to make a conscious effort to lower his voice. “When I was growing up, the other kids avoided me—because they thought I was weird, at first, and then later because they were afraid of me. Did I ever tell you that? I wanted a sibling so much. I used to think, if I’d had a brother or a sister, someone like me, maybe I wouldn’t have been so…” Ren gestured vaguely with his hands, as if groping for the right word.

“Go on.”

“Lonely.” Ren speaks the word like it’s foreign to him. He’s got an odd, pinched look on his face, like something is digging into him. “Looking back, I don’t know if it would’ve helped, but all the same…” He glances up. “You didn’t have anyone, either. You never thought about that?”

“Of course I did,” Hux says. As a small boy, he occasionally fantasized about the companionship of another child, an idealized sibling whose most important quality was simply that they weren’t the nanny droid. By the time he was school-aged, he had outgrown such desires. He hasn’t thought of that in years—and yet, thinking of it now, he still remembers how acute the longing was at a certain time. He clears his throat. “The difference between you and me is that I determined that having no siblings was to my advantage, and that I was fortunate in that regard.”

But Ren’s got that knowing look on his face now, and his eyes are dark and shiny in the low light. “You were still lonely. I know you were.”

Hux recoils slightly at that, the sheets rustling. “Don’t bother telling me you’ve had more of those _visions_ of yours,” he says suddenly. “I don’t care. The Force means nothing to me. I am not your personal broodmare—”

“I haven’t had any visions,” Ren promises, raising his hands in a placating gesture. For the moment, Hux believes him. Usually, when Ren has so much as a mystical twinge, he tells Hux all about it. “I’ve just had… desires. Of my own. For our family.”

Hux makes a sound caught between a scoff and a gag. “What ever happened to the master of the Knights of Ren? I’d like to speak with _him_ about this nonsense.”

Ren ignores him, though his face twitches a little in displeasure. “I liked having a baby around,” he goes on, sounding almost pitiful. “I miss it. I thought you did, too. I thought I could feel it.”

“Oh, hardly,” Hux says dismissively. “Just what do you think I miss? The constant feedings? The wailing? The mess? Shmi is finally getting to an age where she can be talked to and reasoned with, and you want to saddle me with another infant. I don’t want to go through all that again.”

“You’re lying.”

Hux narrows his eyes. “You may be a mind reader, Kylo, but that doesn’t mean you know my mind better than I do.”

Ren’s shaking his head. “I told you, I can feel it,” he says, in a low voice. “I felt it the day Shmi took her first steps, when she said her first words—every time she does something new. You look at her, and you can’t believe how big she is already. You regret not paying closer attention when she was younger. You feel like you’ve missed it somehow, when it only just happened. You wish you’d enjoyed it more.”

“I don’t—” Hux’s voice fails, his mouth half-open. He could deny it, but Ren would just catch him in the lie. He’s had those feelings, yes—pulses of regret and nostalgia, and occasionally a longing that he was previously unable to name. It’s just like Ren, he thinks, to pick up on the feeling, but not the context. Before now, it never occurred to Hux that a second child might be a solution, or even an option. Now he turns it over in his mind, experimentally. “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

“I know you. I notice everything about you.” Ren leans in to kiss Hux then, and Hux allows it, though his mind is elsewhere. He’s only half-listening when Ren keeps talking, in a happy murmur: “If you feel the same way, we shouldn’t wait too long before we start trying.”

That catches Hux’s attention. He draws back a little, feeling vaguely suspicious. “Why not? What’s the great rush?”

“Well—you’re thirty-nine.”

“And?”

Ren pauses, as if searching for a trap he senses hidden nearby. “And,” he says slowly, “injections aside, your fertility window is closing.”

“So I’m old, is that it?” Hux bristles despite himself. He knows, of course, than Ren is almost a decade younger than him, only thirty-two. It usually seems like an insignificant gap, but in this context, Ren seems almost unfairly young.

“That’s not what I said. You take everything as a criticism! I just—” Ren scrubs a hand over his face. When he looks up again, his eyes are dark and serious. “I love you, and I want to have a baby with you. On purpose, this time.”

Hux bites back a grimace. As always, Ren’s candor and odd tenderness embarrass him, more so than if he’d said something vulgar. He fights the urge to squirm under Ren’s gaze. “Kriff, do you have to be so…”

“It’s all right, you don’t have to say it,” Ren tells him, before Hux can settle on the right word. He leans in again to kiss Hux on the mouth, just once, just lightly. “You love me. I know.”

For a moment, Hux doesn’t say anything. He feels vaguely defeated, though Ren hasn’t talked him out of or into anything. He’s only been feeling for the edges of Hux’s wants and needs, slowly pulling him open, forcing him to admit what he’s been longing for but unwilling to admit even to himself.

That’s the problem with Ren, of course, and always has been—his uncanny ability to trick Hux into feeling things that would otherwise be shoved down inside. He knows how to get under Hux’s skin, in the best and worst ways. Sometimes it leads to screaming fights, and sometimes it leads to lovemaking, and sometimes it leads to hushed conversations in the middle of the night.

It’s hard on Hux’s pride sometimes, even now, but yielding to Ren is never half as terrible as he thinks it will be. Maybe that’s all love is: a kind of mutual surrender.

“I do love you,” Hux concedes at last, quietly. He supposes he could stand to actually tell Ren more than a few times a year. It doesn’t cost him anything to say it. Ren is his husband, and the father of his child, and they have nothing to prove to each other anymore. He lies down again, facing Ren. “Damn you.”

Ren gives a huffing laugh.

“Don’t think you’ve won,” Hux says hastily. “I haven’t decided anything. Not officially.”

“I know.” Ren is propped up on one elbow, looking down at Hux hopefully. “But—?”

“But…” Hux rolls into his back with a sigh. He slides one arm around Ren’s waist and draws him down to lie beside him. “Maybe we could have one more.”

**Author's Note:**

> I want to say that my reasons for writing goopy kid fic about two actual cold-blooded killers is rooted in, like, a belief that no one is beyond redemption and that people are basically good—but let’s be real, I just want to play in this sandbox.
> 
> special thanks to [chambergambit](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chambergambit/pseuds/chambergambit) for suggesting the name Shmi. that headcanon was too adorable for me to resist. (also, wow, nobody’s ever had a headcanon about something I wrote before! I feel like I leveled up or something.)
> 
> as for the proper author’s notes—re: fake names. I picked the name Eben for two main reasons. first, it sounds enough like Ben that it would probably turn Kylo’s head if somebody shouted it, therefore making it easy to adapt to. second, it’s Jewish (another trait it shares with Ben), and I have elaborate headcanons about the Organa-Solos being a quasi-space-Jewish family (not that they come into play in this series). I chose Niall for Hux largely because I am daily amazed by Domhnall Gleeson’s irrepressible Irishness.
> 
> in other news, I’m planning on this being a four-part series. next up is a companion fic set during Bear, from Leia’s POV (which is about half-written already). the subject of fourth and final installment is under wraps for now, but I’m really excited about it. there’s no eta on either of those fics just yet, but keep your eyes peeled! you can [subscribe to the series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/490429) to get an email when they’re posted.
> 
> thank you for reading! come visit me [on tumblr](http://saltandrockets.tumblr.com/).


End file.
